Posting may be light for a few days. Or maybe a week. I was very busy today, my usual day off.

The fire in the balcony over the narthex at my church has caused quite a bit more damage than we first thought. After I was told that clean-up would take weeks, I did a few “white glove” tests. I found gray soot everywhere. If my office was a 1, the receptionist area just outside was a 2, the student lounge about a 7, the sacristy was about a 4, as was the interior of the tabernacle. The liturgical to-do list is large and growing: piano deconstruction and cleaning or perhaps a new instrument; sound system speakers are toast; the organ may not be salvageable. Vestments will need laundering or dry cleaning. Overhead lighting within forty feet of the fire was destroyed. Asbestos issues will keep us out of church for some time. Then we have all the temporary worship space concerns.

The insurance contractor said that we might be able to get back in by Christmas. I told him our crowds for Parents’ Weekend and Homecoming are much larger.

My car is now the parish’s “mobile sacristy” as we bounce between different liturgical venues. A staff colleague asked me how I was doing. Fine, I said, thanks to my codependent family of origin–we thrive on crisis. And we had a good laugh over it.

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About catholicsensibility

Todd lives in the Pacific Northwest, serving a Catholic parish as a lay minister.